Page:Stories Translated from the German.djvu/223

 young Dane, whose name was Oswald, "that any one could so far forget himself; that a person could be so percipitate! Is it not almost as bad, as if some malicious sorcerer had bound his eyes and had bewitched all his senses?"

They continued to converse for some time upon the subject, but the young Dane was the most violent, and at length appeared to agree with the French, that such occurrences could only happen to a German savant.

They passed on to other subjects, but disputed and conversed mostly upon poetry. Young Oswald, who imitated Oehlenschläger, had read and criticised much, and had likewise entered deeply into mystical subjects, asserted that many superstitions, and a voluntary respect for acknowledged authority, imposed the heaviest shackles upon genius. As such a general assertion might be both true and untrue, they requested him to explain himself more fully, by citing some examples to prove what he had asserted in his speech.

"We Danes," said he hereupon, "are of opinion that many of our geniuses, who have sprung up in modern times, might be compared with the most celebrated men of foreign countries; that there are